RE: Incentives (RE: In the news (Georgia State)

["Rick Anderson" <rick.anderson@utah.edu>]

> the main rationale for using IRs to promote OA seems to be that 
> universities have a strong interest in exhibiting the research 
> that their faculties produce, but do administrators really 
> believe that?

It probably varies from university to university, but I think 
it's always about more than just showcasing local research 
(though that is one factor).

At the University of Utah, our IR has strong support from the 
university administration in part because there is a sense that 
we should be capturing the intellectual products of our 
institution for local use before they escape out into a 
marketplace from which we may not be able to recover them without 
significant expense.  There is also a feeling that the 
traditional publishing model itself needs to change, and that we 
can facilitate that change, to some degree anyway, by declaring a 
certain amount of independence from the old regime.

This is (pax Harnad) a complicated issue, and there are various 
opinions within the campus community about what we should do and 
how we should do it.  But the administration on this campus sees 
a number of good reasons for supporting the IR, and showcasing 
local accomplishments is only one of them.

Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dir. for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library
University of Utah
rick.anderson@utah.edu